In examining the role of computers in politics, it is all too easy to focus on the newest and most sophisticated technologies, such as the blogs and Web pages. Yet, in spite of all the claims that computing technology is changing politics and governance, we find that computing technology has been associated with government since the days of Hollerith.
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Recommendation engines are becoming a critical part of many e-commerce sites. The approach uses complex algorithms to analyze large volumes of data and determine what products that potential consumers might want to buy based on their stated preferences, online shopping choices, and the purchases of people with similar tastes or demographics. Recommendation technology must also be able to reach out...
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One of the greatest threats computer and network users face today is a hacker gaining root-level access to a system. This, in essence, gives the intruder administrative control over the machine and thus a golden opportunity to cause problems. With this in mind, attackers are increasingly using rootkits, a collection of tools they can install on a victim's computer to gain administrative access.
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For concurrent programming to become mainstream, we must discard threads as a programming model. Nondeterminism should be judiciously and carefully introduced where needed, and it should be explicit in programs. In general-purpose software engineering practice, we have reached a point where one approach to concurrent programming dominates all others namely, threads, sequential processes that share...
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Microkernels long discarded as unacceptable because of their lower performance compared with monolithic kernels might be making a comeback in operating systems due to their potentially higher reliability, which many researchers now regard as more important than performance. Each of the four different attempts to improve operating system reliability focuses on preventing buggy device drivers from c...
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Running real-time applications with a variable-speed processor can result in scheduling anomalies and permanent overloads. A proposed computational model varies task response times continuously with processor speed, enabling the system to predictably scale its performance during voltage changes. Mutually exclusive resources and nonpreemptive code can generate scheduling anomalies in a processor wi...
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Communications devices for government or military applications must keep data secure, even when their electronic components fail. Combining information flow and risk analyses could make fault-mode evaluations for such devices more efficient and cost-effective. Conducting high-grade information security evaluations for computer communications devices is intellectually challenging, time-consuming, c...
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Our studies show that using pair programming as a structure for incorporating collaboration in the classroom helps increase and broaden participation in computing fields and helps debunk the myth that programmers work alone all the time. It's also a way for students to get a better view of and feel more confident in their preparation for working in the real world. The face of the IT workforce is c...
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Aims & Scope

Computer, the flagship publication of the IEEE Computer Society, publishes peer-reviewed articles written for and by computer researchers and practitioners representing the full spectrum of computing and information technology, from hardware to software and from emerging research to new applications.